Then, light as a bird, she glided into a gravity-defying arm balance to illustrate the point. “I haven’t been able to do the peacock since I broke my wrist in April, but I did it in that room,” Porchon-Lynch said of the pose she demonstrated recently at Strala Yoga studio. “In yoga every breath I take puts me on the right path.” Porchon-Lynch has been practicing yoga, the ancient discipline connecting breath to movement, for over 70 years. Along the way she has walked with Mahatma Gandhi, modeled couture in Paris, trod the boards in London, and acted under contract to MGM in Hollywood. It was yoga breathing, she said, that kept fear at bay when she worked for the resistance in World War Two France. “I didn’t realize I was doing any of them,” she said of her many adventures. “It’s just the natural path of life. You either travel on it, or you get stuck in the mud.” Born in Pondicherry, India, Porchon-Lynch studied under yoga legends B.K.S. Iyengar and Indra Devi. At age 50 she was given her first paying yoga job in the United States by fitness icon Jack LaLane. “Dancing is a continuation of yoga, like music,” she said. “Music and dancing and yoga are all coming from within you.”
